Hillary: Basket of Deplorables, But what About Senator Whitehouse?

Posted on September 13, 2016September 13, 2016 by Denise Simon

Nancy Pelosi called them ‘astro-turf’. Obamacare architect, Jonathon Gruber called people ‘stupid‘. Things inside the beltway move quite slowly and the reason is the lack of cooperation with the most transparent administration in history, where agencies slow walk responses to document requests, FOIA requests and subpoenas. Such is the case with the IRS targeting program. Now there is a new twist….a senator. Seems the Department of Justice, under that pesky former U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder did have his agency hands on the targeting program. Does he get called back to testify?

How so? Seems the House is calling for an impeachment vote on the IRS Commissioner John Koskinen on Thursday. Perhaps we should get a group rate and group action on these impeachments.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse was/is not bashful about this disdain for conservative groups as noted from his own senate webpage:

Sen. Whitehouse Renews Focus on the “Greater” Scandal at IRS

Senator Urges IRS to Develop Plan for Cracking Down on Groups Misleading the IRS About Their Political Activity

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a leading advocate for campaign finance reform, renewed his call today for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate organizations that abuse non-profit 501(c)(4) status by misleading the IRS about their political activity. The Senator made his case in a letter today to Acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel.

Emails: Dem Senator Urged Justice Department to Prosecute Conservative Groups

Sheldon Whitehouse had specific Tea Party groups in mind as targets

FreeBeacon: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) urged the Department of Justice to prosecute conservative groups that were targeted by the IRS, according to documents obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch.

Sheldon’s staff emailed the Justice Department before an April hearing asking why the department wouldn’t prosecute conservative groups.

“New question from Sen. Whitehouse,” the staff email said. “Sen. Whitehouse is likely to ask [Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili] Raman whether the Department of Justice is too deferential to IRS in deciding to prosecute 501(c) tax organizations that make false statements regarding their political activities in IRS filings.”

“Sen. Whitehouse is curious why, for example if a 501(c) tax organization files were leaked, and they clearly showed that make false statements, [sic] why the Department of Justice wouldn’t prosecute the case by itself and not wait for the IRS,” the email continued.

At the hearing, Whitehouse urged the Justice Department to rethink its deference to the IRS in these cases.

“I would urge that the Department and the Service get together and rethink whether in these two specific areas, which I think bear little resemblance to traditional tax violations and are in fact very plain-vanilla criminal cases, whether or not that deference to the IRS is actually serving the public interest at this point,” Whitehouse said.

The emails reveal that Whitehouse had specific conservative groups in mind for prosecution, including the American Future Fund, Crossroads GPS, Americans for Responsible Leadership, Freedom Path, American is Not Stupid, Inc., RightChange.com II, and A Better America Now.

“The Obama IRS scandal includes abuse of power by Democrats in Congress who wanted to jail Obama’s political opponents to help secure Obama’s reelection,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “And Americans should know that the courts have recently concluded the Obama IRS abuses haven’t stopped- even as we approach another presidential election.”

Whitehouse’s Senate office did not respond to requests for comment.

John Kerry’s Daughter Vanessa and Funneling of Millions

Posted on September 13, 2016September 13, 2016 by Denise Simon

Vanessa Kerry, a physician, married Dr. Brian Nahed in 2009, the New York-born son of Iranian-Americans who live in California.

EXCLUSIVE: John Kerry’s State Department Funneled MILLIONS To His Daughter’s Nonprofit

DailyCaller: More than $9 million of Department of State money has been funneled through the Peace Corps to a nonprofit foundation started and run by Secretary of State John Kerry’s daughter, documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation show.

The Department of State funded a Peace Corps program created by Dr. Vanessa Kerry and officials from both agencies, records show. The Peace Corps then awarded the money without competition to a nonprofit Kerry created for the program.

Initially, the Peace Corps awarded Kerry’s group — now called Seed Global Health — with a three-year contract worth $2 million of State Department money on Sept. 10, 2012, documents show. Her father was then the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which oversees both the Department of State and the Peace Corps.

Seed secured a four-year extension in September 2015, again without competition. This time, the Peace Corps gave the nonprofit $6.4 million provided by the Department of State while John Kerry was secretary of state.

Seed also received almost $1 million from a modification to the first award, as well as from Department of State funds the group secured outside the Peace Corps.

The Peace Corps program — called the Global Health Service Partnership (GHSP) — sends volunteer physicians and nurses to medical and nursing schools in Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Liberia, according to Seed’s website. More than 40 clinical educators worked at 13 sites in the 2014-2015 program.

Kerry and government officials colluded to launch the program and ensure that Seed would get the contract.

“Vanessa, Buck, and Sarah are meeting with Ambassador Goosby on the morning of 9/16/11 to discuss next steps for the GHSP,” said a memo from September 16, 2011 — one year before Seed received its first award. “Conversations with OGAC leadership confirm that Ambassador Goosby is very supportive of the initial proposal.”

The memo was referring to Peace Corps Directors Buck Buckingham and Sarah Morgenthau and Ambassador Eric Goosby, who then headed the Office of the US Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC) — the State Department office that later funded GHSP.

A meeting one month later unveiled the strategy to send tax dollars to Seed.

“The public funding to start the GHSP is secured, it will come from OGAC through [Peace Corps] to support core HQ and field based activities, and to develop a sub-agreement to provide support to the foundation for contributions for their work in this partnership,” minutes from a Nov. 18, 2011, meeting said. The “foundation” refers to Seed, which was then called the Foundation for Global Health Service.

Officials in that meeting also assured Kerry that she would not have to compete with other groups for Department of State funds.

“Buck obtained clarity of the mechanism by which federal money will be provided to” Seed, the minutes said. “The process can be fast tracked and non-competed through a specific grant mechanism.”

Meanwhile, the State Department buried its intent to transfer funds to the Peace Corps in its required congressional notification.

“The GHSP is a smaller line item in a multi-page document with multi-million dollar programs,” minutes from the November 2011 meeting said.

Seed received its first award less than one year later. Peace Corps later provided another nearly $900,000, noting it underestimated the program’s expenses, especially travel and salary costs.

It’s unclear when that modification was added, but Kerry drew a salary from Seed for the first time in 2014. She was the only officer listed on the nonprofit’s 990 tax form to receive compensation — some $140,000 for a reported 30 hours per week.

Discussion about the $6.4 million extension also provides questionable details. Peace Corps officials noted that contracts could not extend beyond five years and considered competing the next award, but decided they would “go forward with sole-source option if mandated by OGAC,” minutes from a July 17, 2014 meeting said.

Ultimately, the extension was awarded without competition on Sept. 10, 2015. It’s unclear why the Peace Corps violated its five-year policy by giving Seed seven years of non-competitively awarded funding.

Peace Corps justified the decision to forgo competition by arguing Seed was already burrowed into the program, and that replacing it out would cause problems.

“As such, if a cooperative agreement were to be awarded to a new partner, applicants that were recruited and vetted by Seed may be unable to be placed in the field,” a Sept. 10 2015 document stated. The document further noted that “Peace Corps has been unable to identify any potential partners which satisfy the needs of the GHSP program” other than Seed, which was created based around the program’s needs.

Seed spokesman Mark Marino denied any conflicts of interest, telling TheDCNF:

No conflict of interest exists in our partnership with Peace Corps and the US government. Dr. Vanessa Kerry is primarily employed by and paid through Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kerry receives no financial compensation from the Peace Corps or US government. Funding from the Peace Corps, an independent agency in the federal government, represents about 27% of Seed’s total $6.3 million budget this fiscal year.

Marino also claimed that “Seed is the only organization that provides debt repayment for US doctors, nurses, and midwives to serve internationally, something Seed does entirely through private philanthropy. Seed specifically works in the areas of medical, nursing and midwifery education focused on human resource capacity building, making it different than many other non-government organizations.”
A Peace Corps spokesman who demanded anonymity told TheDCNF that the “Peace Corps is proud of the continued work we have done in collaboration with Seed Global Health and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to send qualified health professionals abroad to teach and expand clinical capacity.”

“Since the agency’s early years, Peace Corps has sought to improve health outcomes in the countries it serves. The Global Health Service Partnership is an innovative continuation of the Peace Corps’ commitment to global health.”

Department of State spokesman John Kirby told TheDCNF that “there is absolutely no conflict of interest here. Secretary Kerry played no role in this decision making while in the Senate or subsequently while at the State Department.”

Kirby said “Kerry’s work on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee allotted funding to PEPFAR generally — not directly to this program. Using funds appropriated by Congress for PEPFAR, the State Department directs funds through an interagency process to seven implementing agencies.”

“The Peace Corps recommended the GHSP for funding support, and approval of that support went through the standard interagency budgeting and review process. The GHSP was one element supporting PEPFAR’s Human Resources for Health Strategy, which was developed in part to meet the goal set by the U.S. Congress of 140,000 new health care workers trained by PEPFAR under its fiscal year 2009-2013 reauthorization.”

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Worth $2 Billion Secreted in the Mexican Desert

Posted on September 12, 2016September 12, 2016 by Denise Simon

An aluminum stockpile (pictured), worth $2 billion and representing six per cent of the world’s aluminum, was discovered two years ago in San José Iturbide, a city in central Mexico

Liu (center) controls China Zhongwang Holdings Ltd, the world’s second largest aluminum producer in its category. His current fortune is estimated at $3.2 billion

Liu, who is currently the deputy secretary of China’s Communist Party, told the Wall Street Journal he didn’t have any connection with the aluminum in San José Iturbide. He denied trying to route his aluminum through Mexico to avoid the payments. More from the DailyMail.

A Chinese billionaire may have hidden 6 percent of the world’s aluminum in the Mexican desert

It’s not every day that Mr. Bean makes an appearance on the Wall Street Journal’s commodities coverage.

And that might not even be the strangest finding in the Journal’s investigation into a massive pile of aluminum that allegedly just sat there, unused, in the Mexican desert for years.

To start, some background: China’s growing industrial sector has been hard on the aluminum producers in the United States. In 2000 there were 23 smelters operating nationwide, now there are only five.

So when an aluminum executive named Jeff Henderson got wind of a giant stockpile of Chinese aluminum just below the U.S border with Mexico, he decided to commission a plane to check it out.

What did they find?

Six percent of the world’s aluminum, worth some $2 billion and enough to make 77 billion beer cans, according to the Journal‘s fascinating report.

The revelation led to tensions between U.S. trade authorities and China, as U.S. industry executives insist that the metal is linked to Liu Zhongtian, who runs China Zhongwang Holdings, an enormous industrial aluminum company.

U.S. industry officials allege the metal got there as part of a scheme to evade trade restrictions. The idea was to move aluminum through Mexico into the U.S. where it could benefit from provisions in the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“These things have nothing to do with me,” Liu told the Journal, although the results of the investigation cast doubt on that claim.

Aluminum manufacturing is subsidized in China, and so Chinese firms were able to undercut U.S. producers; the United States responded by setting up tariffs to make domestic aluminum more attractive.

Routing Chinese aluminum through Mexico was a way to get around those tariffs.

Things went awry when a one of Liu’s alleged business partners Po-Chi “Eric” Shen, started to gain attention over some of his erratic practices, which the Journal report highlighted and included spending fortunes on dubious expenses like $70 million worth of red diamonds and rare Ferraris.

The relationship allegedly deteriorated quickly — Shen made headlines in 2014 when he wrecked Liu’s sports car while vacationing in Italy, and was rescued by Rowan Atkinson, of Mr. Bean fame.

The metal may never make it to the United States, in fact there are currently plans to ship it back to Asia, this time Vietnam.

House Re-Starts Hillary Email Hearings with New Witnesses

Posted on September 12, 2016September 12, 2016 by Denise Simon

Congress demands answers after surprise Clinton investigation immunity

WashingtonExaminer: Many observers were surprised to learn, in a New York Times report, that the contractor who destroyed Hillary Clinton’s emails while they were under a congressional subpoena received immunity from the Justice Department — and then still refused to answer some questions from the FBI. The surprised included the top two Clinton email investigators in Congress, Reps. Trey Gowdy and Jason Chaffetz, who have both pored over the Clinton materials the FBI handed over to lawmakers.

It was news to them. Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, had no idea until the Times learned it. Same for Gowdy, head of the Benghazi committee.

“If there is a reason to withhold the immunity agreement from Congress — and by extension, the people we represent — I cannot think of what it would be,” Gowdy said in a statement. “I look forward to asking the Bureau about any witnesses who were granted immunity or claimed a privilege preventing them from answering questions.”

Chaffetz will start asking those questions tonight — in a rare Monday evening hearing before the Oversight Committee. Among the witnesses called are top officials who deal with Congress for the FBI and the Justice Department.

Perhaps the key question Chaffetz and his fellow Republicans — Democrats won’t be interested — will pose is: What more have you not told us? Committee members appreciated the FBI handing over Clinton email investigative materials, but they have since learned that the FBI was selective in what it gave to Congress. There are documents that weren’t handed over, and there are significant blackouts in the documents that were given to lawmakers.

The most fundamental questions concern the extent of the classified information that Clinton mishandled. In his July 5 public statement, FBI Director James Comey revealed that 110 of Clinton’s emails had material that was classified at the time they were sent, and more than 2,000 additional emails had material that was later determined to be classified. But what was the classified information that Clinton mishandled? Of course the FBI cannot release it, but it could give Congress, and by extension the American people, a more precise characterization of the secrets Clinton handled in what Comey called an “extremely careless” way.

And then there is the process of the FBI’s investigation itself. It’s not just the fact of the email deleter’s immunity that Congress didn’t know. Anyone who has had a chance to look over the only two documents that have been released to the public — a heavily-redacted copy of the FBI’s summary report plus the so-called “302” writeup of the agents’ interview with Clinton — has come away with some very important questions unanswered.

Like: Who actually gave the order to delete Clinton’s emails? And: Did that order come after — not before — that material was under a subpoena from Congress? And: Who decided to give the deleter immunity? And: What questions did the deleter refuse to answer? And: What does immunity mean if the witness granted immunity still refuses to answer questions? And more.

That’s what the Oversight Committee’s second hearing, to be held Tuesday morning, will address. Called to testify — actually subpoenaed to testify — will be Paul Combetta, the technician for Platte River Networks, the Colorado contractor hired by Clinton to handle her email system. Combetta is the man who had the infamous “oh s—t” moment described in the FBI report in which he allegedly realized he had forgotten to carry out a December 2014 order to destroy emails and instead carried it out sometime in March 2015, after the material was under congressional subpoena.

Combetta is also the one who was given immunity and then, according to the FBI, refused to answer questions about a conference call he had around the time of the deletions with Clinton lawyer David Kendall and top Clinton operative Cheryl Mills.

Republican investigators have a lot of questions for Combetta. The first is whether he will show up. Right now, that’s not clear.

Also called to testify is Bryan Pagliano, the former State Department tech worker who set up Clinton’s private email system — and who has also received immunity from the Justice Department. Along with them will be another worker for Platte River Networks and a longtime employee of former President Bill Clinton.

Pagliano’s immunity has been known for a while. But the revelation of immunity given to Combetta, who the FBI report says destroyed Clinton’s emails and backups after the subpoena, deeply troubles Gowdy, a former prosecutor.

“They gave immunity to the trigger man,” Gowdy told Fox News on Friday. “I mean, that’s why those of us who used to do it for a living didn’t like to give immunity … They immunized the one person you most want to prosecute for the destruction of government records.”

*****

DailyCaller: The Denver-based tech firm that worked on Hillary Clinton’s email server billed the candidate $250 an hour for interviews its employee gave to the FBI.

According to an invoice that the tech company, Platte River Networks (PRN), submitted last September to Clinton’s accounting firm, Marcum LLC., the payment was sought for interviews that PRN employee Paul Combetta gave to the FBI.

Politico reported last November that federal investigators interviewed PRN employees in September. The employees were not identified in the article.

One item on the invoice, which was obtained by the website Complete Colorado last year, is a $3,000 charge for 12 hours worth of work for Combetta, who is identified by name and by his initials on the invoice.

The charges were for “federal interviews” and “travel back east.”

Other charges on the invoice suggest that PRN — which charged an hourly rate of $250 — billed Clinton for seven hours of Combetta’s interviews. The date of the entry is Sept. 15. Three other entries on the invoice add up to $1,750 in charges for seven hours of work. One entry is a $1,250 charge for Combetta’s five hour flight to Denver.

Combetta entered the ongoing Clinton email scandal last week after The New York Times reported that he was granted immunity by the Justice Department in exchange for his cooperation with the federal investigation into Clinton’s email server. The report angered South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, who noted that the FBI’s recent report on the Clinton email investigation showed that Combetta lied to investigators about his decision to delete backups of Clinton’s emails.

Combetta used a software program called BleachBit to delete the backups. The decision came after a conference call with Clinton staffers. Clinton’s campaign said that nobody affiliated with the candidate knew about Combetta’s actions.

It is still unclear whether Clinton paid the PRN invoice which lists Combetta, but the fact that the firm billed for the interview is raising questions about whether it and Combetta were in effect working for Clinton during the investigation.

According to Complete Colorado, the site that published the PRN invoice:

If the Clintons were paying for Mr. Combetta’s time and travel, and especially if they were paying for any legal assistance he received through his employer, Denver-based Platte River Networks, it raises the question of how independent Mr. Combetta’s cooperation with the FBI was. Alternately, it could show he remained tethered, and therefore loyal to some degree, to Hillary Clinton and her team.

Platte River’s spokesman, Andy Boian, did not respond to a request for comment. Combetta did not answer phone calls and a voice mail seeking comment.

Obama to Veto the bill Authorizing Lawsuits Against Saudi Arabia

Posted on September 12, 2016September 12, 2016 by Denise Simon

It was thought that declassifying and releasing those 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission report would produce the smoking gun that Saudi Arabia was exclusively behind the attacks. While there were some interesting facts and connections, the real proof was not there. In the first order of business since the return from summer break, the House voted along with the Senate approving legislation where victims’ families could sue Saudi Arabia. This puts, Barack Obama in a precarious position with regard to his veto pen. Does he stand with the families or with Saudi Arabia?

We have the answer according to Josh Earnest, the White House spokesperson:

Screen Shot 2016-09-12 at 3.44.01 PM

“That is still the plan. The president does plan to veto this legislation,” press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters. “I do anticipate the president will veto the legislation when it is presented to him. It hasn’t been presented to him yet.”

The Press Secretary reiterated the White House’s concerns with passing the bill saying, “It’s not hard to imagine other countries using this law as an excuse to haul U.S. diplomats or U.S. service members or even U.S. companies into courts all around the world.”

“The president believes that it’s important to look out for our country, to look out for our service members, to look out for these diplomats and allowing this bill to come into law would increase the risk that it would face,” he continued. More here.

It was al Qaeda that struck America 15 years ago for sure, but Iran and Saudi Arabia had is some measure a hand in training, financial support and harboring key al Qaeda operatives. Meanwhile, the al Qaeda operation is still quite functional and not to be dismissed or under-estimated.

In part from the LWJ: Some US officials argue that al Qaeda has been “decimated” because of the drone campaign and counterterrorism raids. They narrowly focus on the leadership layer of al Qaeda, while ignoring the bigger picture. But even their analysis of al Qaeda’s managers is misleading.

Al Qaeda has lost dozens of key men, but there is no telling how many veterans remain active to this day. Experienced operatives continue to serve in key positions, often returning to the fight after being detained or only revealing their hidden hand when it becomes necessary. Moreover, al Qaeda knew it was going to lose personnel and took steps to groom a new generation of jihadists capable of filling in.

From left to right: Saif al Adel, Abu Mohammed al Masri and Abu Khayr al Masri. These photos, first published by the FBI and US intelligence officials, show the al Qaeda leaders when they were younger.Last year, several veterans were reportedly released from Iran, where they were held under murky circumstances. One of them was Abu Khayr al Masri, who paved the way for Al Nusrah’s rebranding in July. Another is Saif al Adel, who has long been wanted for his role in the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. At least two others freed by Iran, Abu Mohammed al Masri and Khalid al Aruri, returned to al Qaeda as well.

Masri, Al Adel, and Aruri may all be based inside Syria, or move back and forth to the country from Turkey, where other senior members are based. Mohammed Islambouli is an important leader within al Qaeda. After leaving Iran several years ago, Islambouli returned to Egypt and eventually made his way to Turkey, where he lives today.

Sitting to Julani’s right during his much ballyhooed announcement was one of Islambouli’s longtime compatriots, Ahmed Salama Mabrouk. The diminutive Mabrouk is another Zawahiri subordinate. He was freed from an Egyptian prison in the wake of the 2011 uprisings.

Al Qaeda moved some of its senior leadership to Syria and several others from this cadre are easy to identify. But al Qaeda has also relied on personnel in Yemen to guide its global network. One of Zawahiri’s lieutenants, Hossam Abdul Raouf, confirmed this in an audio message last October. Raouf explained that the “weight” of al Qaeda has been shifted to Syria and Yemen, because that is where its efforts are most needed.

The American drone campaign took out several key AQAP leaders in 2015, but they were quickly replaced. Qasim al Raymi, who was trained by al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1990s, succeeded Nasir al Wuhayshi as AQAP’s emir last summer. Raymi quickly renewed his allegiance to Zawahiri, whom Raymi described as the “the eminent sheikh” and “the beloved father.” Another al Qaeda lifer, Ibrahim Abu Salih, emerged from the shadows last year. Salih was not a public figure beforehand, but he has been working towards al Qaeda’s goals in Yemen since the early 1990s. Ibrahim al Qosi (an ex-Guantanamo detainee) and Khalid al Batarfi have stepped forward to lead AQAP and are probably also part of al Qaeda’s management team.

This old school talent has helped buttress al Qaeda’s leadership cadre. They’ve been joined by men who signed up for al Qaeda’s cause after the 9/11 attacks as well. In July, the US Treasury Department designated three jihadists who are based in Iran. One of them, known as Abu Hamza al Khalidi, was listed in bin Laden’s files as part of a “new generation” of al Qaeda leaders. Today, he plays a crucial role as the head of al Qaeda’s military commission, meaning he is the equivalent of al Qaeda’s defense minister. Treasury has repeatedly identified other al Qaeda members based in Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Some members of the “new generation” are more famous than others. Such is the case with Osama’s son, Hamzah bin Laden, who is now regularly featured in propaganda.

This brief survey of al Qaeda is not intended to be exhaustive, yet it is still sufficient to demonstrate that the organization’s bench is far from empty. Moreover, many of the men who lead al Qaeda today are probably unknown to the public.

The threat to the West

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in February, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned that al Qaeda “nodes in Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Turkey” are “dedicating resources to planning attacks.” His statement underscored how the threats have become more geographically dispersed over time. With great success, the US worked for years to limit al Qaeda’s ability to strike the West from northern Pakistan. But today, al Qaeda’s “external operations” work is carried out across several countries.

During the past fifteen years, Al Qaeda has failed to execute another mass casualty attack in the US on the scale of the 9/11 hijackings. Its most recent attack in Europe came in January 2015, when a pair of brothers backed by AQAP conducted a military-style assault on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris. AQAP made it clear that the Charlie Hebdo massacre was carried out according to Zawahiri’s orders.

Thanks to vigilance and luck, al Qaeda hasn’t been able to replicate a 9/11-style assault inside the US. Part of the reason is that America’s defenses, as well as those of its partner nations, have improved. Operations such as the 9/11 hijackings are also difficult to carry out in the first place. Even the 9/11 plan experienced interruptions despite a relatively lax security environment. (Most famously, for example, the would-be 20th hijacker was denied entry into the US at an Orlando airport in the summer of 2001.)

But there is another aspect to evaluating the al Qaeda threat that is seldom appreciated. It is widely assumed that al Qaeda is only interested in attacking the West. This is flat false. Most of the organization’s resources are devoted to waging insurgencies in Muslim majority countries.

The story in Syria has been telling. Although al Qaeda may have more resources in Syria than anywhere else, Zawahiri did not order his men to carry out a strike in the West. Al Qaeda’s so-called “Khorasan Group” laid the groundwork for such operations, but Zawahiri did not give this cadre the green light to actually carry them out. Zawahiri’s stand down order is well known. In an interview that aired in May 2015, for instance, Julani explained that the “directives that come to us from Dr. Ayman [al Zawahiri], may Allah protect him, are that Al Nusrah Front’s mission in Syria is to topple [Bashar al Assad’s] regime” and defeat its allies. “We have received guidance to not use Syria as a base for attacks against the West or Europe so that the real battle is not confused,” Julani said. However, he conceded that “maybe” the mother al Qaeda organization is plotting against the West, just “not from Syria.” Julani emphasized that this “directive” came from Zawahiri himself.

To date, al Qaeda has not lashed out at the West from inside Syria, even though it is certainly capable of doing so. Al Qaeda’s calculation has been that such an attack would be too costly for its strategic interests. It might get in the way of al Qaeda’s top priority in Syria, which is toppling the Assad regime. This calculation could easily change overnight and al Qaeda could use Syria as a launching pad against the West soon. But they haven’t thus far. It helps explain why there hasn’t been another 9/11-style plot by al Qaeda against the US in recent years. It also partially explains why al Qaeda hasn’t launched another large-scale operation in Europe for some time. Al Qaeda has more resources at its disposal today than ever, so the group doesn’t lack the capability. If Zawahiri and his advisors decided to make anti-Western attack planning more of a priority, then the probability of another 9/11-style event would go up. Even in that scenario, al Qaeda would have to successfully evade the West’s defenses. But the point is that al Qaeda hasn’t been attempting to hit the West nearly as much as some in the West assume.

In the meantime, it is easy to see how the al Qaeda threat has become more diverse, just as Clapper testified. AQAP has launched several thwarted plots aimed at the US, including the failed Christmas Day 2009 bombing. In 2009, al Qaeda also plotted to strike trains in the New York City area. In 2010, a Mumbai-style assault in Europe was unraveled by security services. It is not hard to imagine al Qaeda trying something along those lines once again. Other organizations tied to al Qaeda, such as the Pakistani Taliban, have plotted against the US as well.

Fifteen years after the 9/11 attacks, al Qaeda lives. Fortunately, Zawahiri’s men have not replicated the hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. But the al Qaeda threat looms. It would be a mistake to assume that al Qaeda won’t try a large-scale operation again. Comprehensive story here.